Company of Heroes review'd!

[This was intended as a write-up for the "+ List" but it ended up being way too long, so I'm putting it here.]


For the first few minutes, this game basically looked like Dawn of War with a WWII reskin job (not surprising considering it's coming from the same duo as DoW: Relic develops, THQ publishes), but after playing through the single-player campaign, I've found that there's a lot more depth here: intelligent use of cover, completely destructable environments, three distinct advancement trees (Infantry, Airborne, or Armor), and the constant struggle to keep supply lines open. The ability to put up sandbags, razor wire, tank traps, and other defensive measures means that when you take a position, you can really dig in and hold it. At least that's how I play.

It also seems more true to life (and yes, I'm basing this off of my experiences in 'Nam)--you can't just waltz into the enemy camp and start shooting up the place. As fun as DoW is, success in that game does tend to boil down to developing your technology until you have tanks, and then just driving in and killing everything you see. CoH (yes, these acronyms get tedious, don't they?) does offer that option, if you want to use the Armor approach, but gives you more subtle options as well--I like sending in a couple of snipers to spot for me, and then blowing the bejeezus out of enemy positions with artillery strikes.  Subtle, like I said. 

Plus, it has all the obvious improvments--better graphics (by far--this game eats my compy's lunch at full settings), better AI, etc. The one thing it's missing is a cinematic mode (a la Empire at War) that lets you watch a battle after you give your orders. A game this pretty should really show itself off.

My score: 9.7/10